1. Field of the Invention
The invention proposes a very high security reusable security seal without any deterioration or destruction to the mechanism and making it possible to verify the intrusion. This type of seal can be used: either to control and verify the intrusion in a connection or system or unsuccessful attempt maintaining the integrity of an object or its contents by an unauthorized person, or on the contrary, to be opened by an agent in order to control and verify his entry.
2. Background Art
A large number of systems exist to check the intrusion or the attempt of intrusion in a system or a location protected against unauthorized people and to identify and authenticate objects as being originals. The most common modern methods are:                electronic alarms, these systems set off an alarm when there is intrusion when the alarm is not stopped beforehand using a secret code, for example, or an authorized biometric print.        video surveillance systems make it possible to record or control in real time the access or crossing points,        cards (with chip, magnetic . . . ), secret codes or biometrics make it possible to control access to the location or protected system.        
All these methods are adapted to the access and exit controls from persons in private or public places. For security of system access or even the prevention of general access in a location or system, except by authorized staff, safety seals are generally used, making it possible to restrict and prohibit intrusion in the system or in the protected location. Seals are also used to guarantee the integrity or the authenticity of an object. These seals can take various forms according to the application. Inspection of the physical integrity of the seal makes it possible, in theory, to ensure that there is no violation of the system or the object. The name “system” is taken in the broad sense, it can be, for example, an assembly of associated elements or a unit or unspecified conditions such as a bottle requiring preservation of content integrity, it can also be an information system.
The present invention particularly focuses on the application of processing significant data as will be further described.
The oldest seal is the wax seal, generally marked with the seal of authority. There are also metal seals or plastic ones integrating a collar identifier appearing upon progressive tightening. These seals are not reusable because their destruction is irremediable when there is violation of the location or protected system. There are also “beaded” metal seals in the form of grooved threads whose two ends are crimped in a section of soft metal, generally lead, using a special grip that marks a seal in relief the aforementioned lead section; this is also called a filling. This last type of seal is often used on water, gas, and electric meters in order to prohibit access to the electrical or mechanical measuring device. In the same way, in the great family of seals, we can arrange identification plates or supports of all types which are very often metal plates, engraved or stamped plastic or printed. These plates or supports in general identify an object, a complex system or a machine or an individual through an identity card, this support being the delivered marked seal of authority that makes it possible to authenticate. The applications implementing identification plates or supports are numerous and varied, among the most frequent one can find: motor vehicles that have manufacturer identification plates and inspection number plates; identification plates and homologation of machine tools; plates on materials and electric and electronic machines, etc. . . . In general, these identification plates are indexed in files or in manufacturer or administration databases.
All these types of identification seals or supports present two major disadvantages: the first is that they are very easily reproducible with identical average synopses, including the authenticating element or seal, besides it is possible to get them in great quantity on the market; the second, is the substitution of an object or protected system. For some of them, the connection between the seal or the support and the parts necessary to prohibit separation or opening are ineffective and can be easily destroyed by preserving intact the seal or support; for example, a joint that could be dissolved by a chemical or suitable solvent which will make it possible to recover the seal, to reach the closed area and to reposition the seal in the same place, and thus to have reached or modified data without detection. It also becomes possible to substitute an original product seal with a copy and thus make the copy pass for the original.
Another major problem is the ratio of cost/security. In general, the more secure, the higher the cost, which poses a major problem for large applications that consume seals and where one would need simultaneously a low cost with a high level of security that contradicts current solutions.
In the same way, to prohibit physical access to electronic systems containing confidential data, it has become common to use very specific holograms and even for some high security systems. However, the high security qualifier was adapted certainly more in the past than at the present time through actual means allowing them to very easily be reproduced identically with a level of quality comparable with the original.
Moreover holograms are not individualized, i.e. they all are identical in the same series and so it becomes easy for an unauthorized person to get these holograms, to open the protected case by destroying the hologram and replace it by a fully identical new one. If it is not possible to get the hologram, the counterfeiter can always separate it from the case without destroying it and in the same way position it back. Thus in one way or another, it becomes extremely easy for a determined person to violate a system and physically reach confidential data, for example in a black box containing memory storage or to substitute an object for another. In a general way and whatever the method used, the security seal must on the one hand prevent physically compromising the container access and contents, and on the other hand, expose such intrusions when despite everything this has occurred. A security seal does not have the ability to make attacks against a system or access to a location or unspecified container impossible; on the other hand if it is well designed and integrated on the product or location to be protected, it will dissuade the eager attacker and leave evidence of the attempt. It acts above all of as a means of defense, which on the average is able to highlight an attack attempt on the physical integrity of the system or object on which it is assembled. According to the application, the seal known as the security seal can take several forms. A seal is in fact an average joint performing a union between itself and one or more elements marked by an authorized seal (seal of State for example).
In all these applications, the problems are precisely the possibility of identically reproducing these seals for fraudulent access to the physical contents of the location or the system.
The protected patent FR2848698 from the same applicant and inventor, concerns a process of identification and authentication without a specific reader of an object or a living being. In this document, it is recommended to attach an identifier difficult or impossible to reproduce within the object or living being to identify or authenticate. As noted, this document does not refer to a system monitoring non-intrusions of a protected location or the integrity of an object and that is precisely the object of this invention. The process described in document FR2848698 does not make it possible in any case to guarantee system or protected location breeches. Indeed, the fact of affixing an identifier on an object does not prevent gaining access to the object, modifying it, analyzing it, and from replacing the same identifier without detection even if this is not reproducible. In the worst cases, it is even possible to take the authenticator without destroying the object and affix it to another object.
Document WO 01/11591 describes a device which makes it possible to identify objects. This identifier has the effect of comprising a matrix of lenses which generates a visual effect in three dimensions, which does not want to claim that it is not reproducible. What is revealed in this document completely differs from this invention primarily in that:                following the example of patent FR2848698, this identifier does not allow guarantee of the opening description or the intrusion of the object or the protected location.        The identifier described in this document is reproducible ad infinitum since it rests certainly on a manufacturing process, complex but completely controlled. Consequently the uniqueness of this identifier is not assured.        The identifier is not associated with a database.        
Document EP 1087334 describes a system of seals calling upon a transponder which makes it possible to contain remote electronic and questionable identification. This type of transponder is not unique since it is completely possible for a person or an organization having production means of producing several having the same number. Consequently, it is completely possible to open the device described to access its contents and to completely reconstitute two capsules identical to the first answers with a transponder giving the same answer as the first. In fact, the fault of this type of device is in the supply chain of the capsules and transponders, if a person or unscrupulous organization can divert parts, it will be able to reconstitute the seal identical to the first. Moreover this type of seal is not reusable after opening. In the present invention, as will be seen hereafter, the process of non-intrusion rests on a unique authenticator and is not identically reproducible and recorded in a database, consequently, even if a person manages to subtilize authenticators, the latter will not aid any utility because they will not be recorded in the dated base.
Patent WO02/33682A describes a reusable seal where passage of the closed position to the open position implies activation of a random electronic code generator. The reading of this code displays if the seal was open if the code changed or on the contrary, was not opened if the code did not change. If the goals of this patent are identical to those of this invention, not only are the means different but also the results in terms of security are much higher in the developed invention. Indeed, proof of non-entry is delivered in this patent by the reading of an electronic posting, but such a posting can be identically reproduced from knowledge of the generation code algorithms. In the same way, without knowing the generation code algorithms, this reusable seal can be substituted by another that is at all points identical where a posting can reveal a code identical to the original, but the programming will have been performed by an internal electronic system that counterfeits codes on demand. It is thus completely impossible to interchange this type of seal by another with the having identical authenticating characteristics.
The patent U.S. Pat. No. 4,118,057 describes a reusable seal where the authenticating characteristic part is provided by the random fitting of various colors balls appearing in a window. The extremely high number of combinations makes it possible to affirm that it is impossible to reproduce two identical consequent combinations to secure the opening or unseal it. The system is completely mechanical, it does not have electronics, the substitution of a seal by another seal in all points identical and providing the same arrangement of balls is theoretically possible because even the balls are perfectly reproducible in size and color. So it is enough to reach the display window and to position identical balls. In this manner, if it appears difficult to modify the device in the course of use, it is always easy to prepare another similar device prepared in advance for an identical arrangement of the authenticating part, i.e. the identical positioning of colored balls.
U.S. Pat. No. 2003/0014647 describes authenticators with bubbles, always unique and impossible to reproduce with the associated means to interpret it. This bubble authenticator, although impossible to reproduce, cannot act alone within the framework of this invention for a reusable seal because it cannot prove that a seal was not opened and closed again. On the other hand, as that will be seen in the description of the invention hereafter, this type of authenticator is particularly well adapted to the present invention as individual authenticator, associated with another authenticator of comparable type, but inevitably different in these characteristics. The unit cooperates in a chaotic manner to obtain an infinite number of new stable nonreproducible positions.